Analytics: Even the most rigorous analysis fails without the right story (episode #153)

I am not a numbers guy. And I’ve been in my fair share of meetings with decks filled with endless charts and data and my eyes glazed over. I’m sure you have as well. So were we the problem? Were we just not captivated enough by the correlation coefficient? I think not. And I think the reason why can be best summed up by this lesson I read in a How I Made It In Marketing podcast guest application – Even the most rigorous analysis fails without the right story. Numbers, even very impressive numbers, still need that marketer’s touch. To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I sat down with a numbers guy who also has some deep marketing and business insights to share with us –  Jiaxi Zhu, head of analytics, SMB division, Google [https://www.google.com/]. Google’s SMB division works with five million customers. Zhu leads the analysis for how to manage and prioritize the division’s several-hundred-million-dollar budget. Lessons from the things he madeEven the most rigorous analysis fails without the right storyLanding solutions requires going deep and doing the hard workDefine your data with your business partnersReal influence means accepting the world is not fair or rational by defaultTrue empathy is active workIntellectual curiosity means always asking “why” behind the observations Turn your knowledge assets into a new revenue stream MarketingSherpa has teamed up with parent company MeclabsAI to produce a research study. We are granting 10 AI engineering vouchers worth $7,500 each to eligible companies. Apply for your $7,500 AI Engineering Voucher [https://meclabs.com/research/ai-engineering-voucher] Discussed in this episode Transparent Marketing: How to make your product claims credible … not incredible [https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/transparent-credible-product-claims] Customer-First Marketing: How The Global Leadership Summit grew attendance by 16% to 400,000 [https://meclabs.com/gls] B2B Marketing Leadership: The higher you get in the organization, the more details you need to know (podcast episode #115) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/B2B-marketing-leadership] Marketing and Brand: Embrace healthy friction (podcast episode #48) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/marketing-and-brand] Get more episodes Subscribe to the MarketingSherpa email newsletter [https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters] to get more insights from your fellow marketers. Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes like this one. For more insights, check out... This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages [https://meclabs.com/course/] free digital marketing course. Apply to be a guest If you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application